John FitzGerald: Ireland faces a possible winter recession yet has plundered its war chest Government fuel package effectively takes from the poor to give to the richer as Strait of Hormuz blockade threatens even higher fuel prices

Spot on by John Fitzgerald. There's a lot of political cowardice around pretending that the protestors were representative or particularly vulnerable

www.irishtimes.com/business/eco...

Still haven't seen a census form that was read properly before they filled it out

The return of the animated paper clip

Scientists sound alarm as Atlantic current system much more likely to collapse than thought Collapse would have catastrophic consequences for Europe, Africa and the Americas

We're like that cartoon of the dinosaurs watching the meteor coming

www.irishtimes.com/world/2026/0...

Yeh I was impressed they managed to get Robert Johnson back on the road for that

1947 includes Django Reinhardt, Skip James and Kurt Weill which is the super group I never knew I needed

Spring

Slouching Towards Utopia by Brad De Long is very accessible

I'm rereading a book by a Nobel-winning economist after 20 years. I was impressed the first time, whereas this time round I can't get over how he says absolutely nothing in as many words as possible

With many 'classics' of fact and fiction most of their readers would struggle to summarise the point

We’re delighted to announce the society's 2026 Distinguished Lecture will be delivered by Prof Tyler Anbinder of George Washington University.

"The Surprising Socio-Economic Mobility of New York’s Great Famine Refugees"

Online, 4pm GMT (11am EST), Thurs. 5 Mar. 2026.

Register here: www.eshsi.org

Whoever picks the Valentine's movies for TV is really going left field. So far it's been romantic classics including The Matrix, Saving Private Ryan, Rocky V and The Killing Fields

Sam Altman recently described the new version of ChatGPT as like talking to a PhD, which is true if they were also a sycophant prone to regular hallucinations

The Irish Times view on measuring national welfare: GDP only tells part of the story All too often factors such as sustainability, human well-being and equity remain secondary considerations

I'm writing a book on wellbeing in Ireland. What's striking about the GDP debate is policymakers here rarely treated it as the core metric, which was clearly employment. Similarly Simon Kuznets argued it was a rubbish measure of wellbeing right from its inception

www.irishtimes.com/opinion/edit...

That took me a second but I spluttered when it finally clicked

It's baffling that people still happily broadcast how many voluntary flights they're taking

I've always found this a really poor solution for a whole range of students

*Taps the sign*

If Bilbo had Chat GPT

It really is its own thing

Young people in the 1940s wasting their money instead of saving for a house

I like to think that this is what actually happened to him

No way!? I never made the connection

"Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the US"

True greatness

Trump vows higher tariffs on eight European countries until US gets Greenland US congressional delegation meets Danish and Greenlandic politicians in Copenhagen

We're all like lobsters in a pot being slowly inured to how insane he is

Trump vows higher tariffs on eight European countries until US gets Greenland – The Irish Times share.google/Pnkay4bJ4NAK...

Hello historians - there is a specific purpose role now advertised in UL’s history department - Title of Post: Assistant Professor in Irish History (specialism History of the Family) - all details are over on UL vacancies! Do share! #jobsky #skystorians #speirgorm #speirghorm

Alistair Campbell's diary during the Good Friday negotiations

"George Mitchell said even for these guys, they were being ridiculous. I asked him if he intended to write a book about the talks. ‘No, the truth would be too awful for words.’"

Rite & Reason: In so-called bad old Catholic Ireland, there was no homelessness Rite & Reason: There is a small but significant return to the Christian faith, particularly Catholicism

The logical jumps in this are really something.

www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2026...

Every night RTÉ is playing some classic movie in the middle of the night and each time I promise myself I'll just go to bed. They do it every Christmas